Wednesday, December 28, 2016

These past few weeks have flown by! I don't think I've have that much time to myself other than two or three days at most, lol. First, I went exploring parts of downtown Macon with my squad, then I went on a cruise with some of my besties, then I went around town looking at Christmas lights with my squad, then there was a Nerf war, board games, Christmas with David's family, a bonfire, helping repaint the Taekwondo school, and learning Jujitsu. Overall, a very busy time, lol.One thing that's become tradition for my squad of friends from college is that we like exploring new places and have photoshoots along the way, so we planned on having one last outing this year before everyone went home for Christmas. Harrison took us to this old area near where he used to volunteer at, and we had a blast looking at all of the old buildings and scenery.

We even got to see a train pass us up close while we were leaving the bridge where the train tracks ran. Afterwards, we went to Ninja to have dinner. Most of us had never been there before, so it was a new experience for most of us. All in all, a pretty good place with lots of interesting sushi options, lol.The next day was the big day where me and my besties from high school were driving down to Cape Canaveral to go on a three-day cruise to the Bahamas. We left an hour later than expected since Meethu had to take one last test in order to graduate this semester, but with Emily's crazy fast driving, we still managed to shave off an hour and a half of time from a six hour trip and got there with plenty of time to spare.There were some ups and downs with the overall organization of the cruise, but we still enjoyed ourselves. The food was great, the staff service was exceptional, and the activities were hilarious. There were so much to do onboard that we were always like, what are we doing next? Because the cruise switched ships and needed a longer time to board, they gave us all $15 onboard credit to use. Added to that was the free $50 credit that came with me being a return member, so we had more than enough money to get drinks while onboard, which was nice.When we stopped at the Bahamas, we had a general plan of going to a couple of places for souvenirs for friends and family, but we also ended up going on a tour and visiting a lot of cool places like the Queen's stairs, Atlantis, and some other cheaper markets to bargain for gifts. Lol, we were a little hesitant to go on a tour, but we felt better after we found out that other people were also going. While we were waiting for our tour guide to finish getting a couple of other people to join the tour group, Meethu ended up trying to feed the birds some of the cereal we packed as a snack and ended up dropping the whole box of cereal on the ground beneath her.

We had to walk around a bit to find the Graycliff company which is famous for its cigars, alcohol, and chocolate. Emily wanted to get a cigar there for her boyfriend, and we basically had an adventure exploring the grounds because the place was also a beautiful restaurant and hotel. The place was a giant plot of land with different buildings for different sections of the company and beautiful shrubbery and landscaping used to connect them all together. They even had a mosaic pool, which was so pretty!

Some of the best parts of the cruise was enjoying the hot tubs, midnight pizzas, and watching Akeem, a hilarious standup comedian who gave no shits about making fun of you. Jackie told us that she had never been in a hot tub before, so we had to rectify that immediately after we ate the second day we were on the boat. It was so relaxing, and it felt even better the next day after we came back from the Bahamas. Unfortunately, it started pouring the minute we were getting food, so we had to wait a few hours before we could find a hot tub to get into. Then, we found out why the hot tub was pretty empty compared to other ones: it was extremely hot. Like almost boiling you hot. But it still felt really good for our legs, lol.And of course, the other best part of the cruise was all of the good food. I was so stuffed during the captains dinner when we dressed up and ate a fancy dinner, but I still made room for creme brûlée, which was soo good.

Getting off the boat was a hassle because our departure was delayed for almost two hours, because they couldn't get one of the gangways to line up properly. Because of that, we were all kind of antsy. But we got home eventually, so it was all good. I think Emily and Meethu are convinced that the next cruise we go on is going to be the Royal Caribbean instead of Carnival now though, lol.The next day, I went around town looking at Christmas lights with my squad since Harrison wanted to do one last thing together before he went back home near Savannah to visit his family for Christmas. It was hilarious because we got so hyper and judgmental towards houses that we started yelling "BOOOOO" at the houses that barely tried to decorate. Some houses were really awesome though, and that was when we learned from Harrison that people actually get their houses professionally decorated, lol.Because Mikey and Jerry got back into dueling and bringing along David back into it, they wanted to duel again at Alec's house, and somehow the plans changed to include a nerf war, so I was like, I'm in! It was great; we spent around an hour split into two teams in Alec's backyard trying to pelt the other side with as many bullets as we could. We ended up eating pizza for dinner at his place and goofing off even more afterwards, which was hilarious since Jerry made the mistake of calling himself senpai the day before. XDThe next day, David's cousin, Paul, came down to visit his family, and I was invited to get dinner with him, David, and Kim, so we had a good time eating at Thai Pepper with Christian as our waiter. Apparently Paul wanted to do some Christmas shopping for his family, so I also ended up helping him pick out Christmas presents while we ran around town. Then we came back to David's house, and I had to help teach them how to wrap presents, lol. We played a couple of rounds of Exploding Kittens and talking before he had to go back to their aunt and uncle's place to go to sleep.I spent Christmas Eve til the day after Christmas with David's family in Milledgville. We stayed at his aunt and uncle's house, where they hosted the Christmas party. I met them once before a couple of years ago, but I barely got to talk to them back then since they had an even bigger party back then. This time, I actually got to talk to them and play with their kids more and found out that they are the sweetest and nicest family ever.On Christmas day, we went to Atlanta and his aunt and uncle treated us out to Korean BBQ at this fancy place called Breakers and paid for all of our tickets to watch Moana at AMC Phipps Plaza 14, which is a fancy movie theater that has really nice reclining seats. They also bought a lot of snacks and desserts for us later that night even though most of us were still full from the BBQ, lol. The next day, they bought us a lot of food as well before we left to go back home.

The day we came back home, we also went to Alec's house because he was having a bonfire to get rid of a lot of papers. This was mainly for Harnish's sake, since he had a lot of paperwork to burn from his family's businesses. It was great playing around and being pyromaniacs, lol. We only got through half of the paperwork that Harnish brought over, which was ridiculous. There was so much ashes in the end that it was starting to get out of hand, lol.Since winter break started, our workout group grew exponentially since a lot more of our friends were free and back in town again. Because of that, and also because we workout for free at the Taekwondo school, the owner, Mr. Rankin asked us to help repaint the school this Tuesday and Wednesday, so the past two days have been really busy helping them reorganize and repaint the school.David's friend, Allan, wanted to hangout with us yesterday, but because we already made plans to help repaint the school, he ended up helping us out after treating us to lunch at Thai Pepper since he really wanted sushi, lol.And I was extra tired yesterday because Mr. Rankin was holding a three-day Jujitsu lesson from this Monday through Wednesday, and I got peer pressured to take the class yesterday since I expressed interest in it the day before. It was really fun learning how to do arm bars, and I was fortunate enough to not have to pay for the lesson since Mr. Rankin said me helping out earlier that day was enough as payment. The last lesson was a couple of hours ago, but since my parents came back from their vacation in California earlier today, I decided to stay home and hangout with them. Not to mention vegetate in peace since I've barely had any alone time since this break started.I'm also kind of irritated with David because of the way he's been acting for the past couple of days. I was kind of thinking about it before I took a nap, and I think I woke up even grumpier and took it out on him when we were helping repaint earlier today. Whoops.But yeah, this has definitely been my busiest break yet, and I really enjoyed it. I'm definitely feeling the need to recharge for a while to recuperate, but I don't regret any of my plans this break. I realized just how lucky and thankful I am to know such awesome people who like spending time with me and inviting me to do stuff together.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

I ended up buying a lot of books for my birthday last month since I found out that I had a couple of unused giftcards, so I guess I should call this my birthday book haul, lol. I also bought a couple of books during Black Friday and today as well.

Friday, December 9, 2016

I turned in my last final for this semester earlier today, which means that my break has officially started! Honestly, if I hadn't procrastinated, I would have been done with my take home final for microecon as soon as Wednesday, but let's be real. I ain't about that life, lol.Now I just have to wait a week or two to see how I did on both of my finals. I don't think I did too bad for either of them, so I'm just hoping to maintain my B average in both classes at this point. In the beginning of the semester, I was hoping to get A's, but I quickly realized that financial analysis and microecon analysis were neither of my strong suits in undergrad, lol. I really thought that I was failing financial analysis for a while because he didn't tell us his grading scale for the longest time, so now I'm just happy to pass.Oh grad school, how you've lowered my expectations and lengthen my anxiety.It feels weird not having this lingering feeling of doubt and stress that I should be studying or doing my homework instead of goofing off or procrasticleaning my room. I'm not looking forward to next semester when I'm taking three classes instead of two. D: I will no doubt be feeling even more stressed than usual, especially because my financial analysis teacher will be teaching the accounting class that I signed up for. :oBut enough of the bad news, I'm going on a cruise with some of my best friends next week! We've been planning this since the summer now, so I'm glad that we finally get to go! Although there seems to be a few hitches in the plan, so I hope that everything works out, lol.I finished reading Perfect Scoundrels by Ally Carter earlier this week when I finished my first final, which is really funny because I remember reading Uncommon Criminals, the previous book in the series, during finals week of the fall semester of my freshman year of college. How we've come full circle. Anyway, I think I've gotten over my reading slump, because I want to read some more books! So I'm off to go read now, lol.

Friday, December 2, 2016

I'm hoping to read at least two of these books this month since I didn't read one last month. I'll be done with classes next week, which gives me plenty of time to read afterwards! I'm excited, lol. I've been in a reading mood for the past couple of days now, but there's just no time to read! :(

Thursday, December 1, 2016

I haven't read much this month unfortunately. However, I managed to watch a lot of movies that I've been meaning see earlier this year when they came out! Slowly but surely, I'm catching up to things now that the semester is close to ending, lol.I read:

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Finals are next week, and I'm not prepared at all. I was supposed to catch up with homework over Thanksgiving Break, but who was I kidding, lol. That clearly didn't happen. I hungout with friends and family, and caught up on sleep. Man, I napped so much. But I think I was beginning to get sick, so the naps probably helped since I feel better now.

I'm trying to do better this week, since I only have one week to catch up and cram for finals next week. -__-" It already feels like a long week, lol.

Tuesday, November 15, 2016

These past few weekends have been super busy and fun, and I'm still trying to recover from them all, lol.On Halloween weekend, I was invited to three parties. I only ended up going to two of them because I had homework I needed to do on Sunday, lol.Alec ended up hosting a Halloween party at his house on Friday for MViet like how he did last year, so I went to that party first. Whenever Alec visits me at my house, he usually brings a Nerf gun and shoots me with it in a surprise attack. Because Kyle gave me three of his Nerf guns since he didn't need them anymore, I decided to bring all of them to Alec's house to return the favor. Since last semester, we've been wanting to have a Nerf war between MViet and LASO, but the timing never panned out, so Alec's just been slowly building up his weapons in preparation for a war, lol. So after I came over and shot him, we (David, Kim, Alec, and I) ended up having a little war waiting for the rest of the people to show up.More people came over--a lot of them new MViet members that I hadn't met yet--so we just ended up shooting the people that we knew like John and Sagar, lol. We hungout and ate a bunch of delicious food that Alec and his mom made. We became pyromaniacs for a while since Alec had made a bonfire earlier, so we were just burning everything, lol. Then, before we knew it, half of the group had devolved into an all-out Nerf war while the other half of the room either watched or played card games and got hit in the crossfire, lol. It was great. I ended up hitting Mikey in the balls twice and made a lot of head shots and was hit everywhere as well.The next day, Carina and her roommates were having a party at their place, so Harrison, Alec, and I went to it. Because we were required to be in costume, Harrison made a hilarious Wonder Woman costume, Alec made an inflatable man costume, and I wore the giraffe onesie that Michelle bought for me a couple of months ago. I stupidly thought that headbutting Alec while he was in costume would be a good idea. It wasn't. My forehead was still a little sore the next day.

Not many people came to the party, which sucked because they all put a lot of effort into decorating their house, so it looked amazing. But the food was good, and we got to chill and hangout, which was nice since it's been hard to hangout with Carina and Alec lately since they're both so busy.We made s'mores with their bonfire outside and got to know her roommates some more. Oh, and I almost burned my costume because there were candles on the ground, and I forgot that my onesie had a little tail in the back. As usual whenever we see each other, we come up with a bunch of group hangout ideas that we need to do and try to plan stuff out. As usual, things come up, so we still haven't really had a chance to carry out any of our plans. -__-"The next weekend was my birthday, but because it was also homecoming weekend, everyone was busy, so I mainly spent my weekend with David, Shelle, and Kyle. David treated me out to lunch, and we went exploring around a couple of stores before having to go pick up Kim at college. We ended up going to Target to buy some discounted Halloween candy, lol. Shelle and Kyle came down that night, so my mom made a feast for dinner, and we just pigged out, lol. The next day, Shelle, Kyle, and I went shopping again because they wanted to go to Books A Million and Gottwals, and I needed to get stuff from Walmart. That weekend was just spent shopping, lol. I had cleaned out my wallet because I was tired of how fat and heavy it was and had found a lot of unused gift cards, so I ended up using four of them. I'll post a haul sometime later this month to show all of the books that I bought since I had used both of my Books A Million and Barnes and Noble gift cards.This past weekend, the crew and I had plans to go clothes shopping since Alec and Harrison needed new clothes, watch Dr. Strange, and have a sleepover, but we had to cancel that since my mom wanted to throw a birthday party for my bro and me since our birthdays are in November. Really, it's just an excuse for the party since my parents go to parties all of the time, so they said that it was their turn to throw a party.Harrison, Alec, and Mikey all made it to the party, which made everything funner. David brought along Kim, so it was hilarious watching Kim react to all of our craziness and even get dragged into it, lol. Michelle and Kyle bought me the new Exploding Kittens expansion called Imploding Kittens, so we played it for a while. It was hilarious watching everyone try to screw each other over and trying to pay attention so that we wouldn't get the cone of shame. XD

So yeah, it's been pretty fun these past few weeks. I've been so busy/lazy that I didn't have enough time to study for my financial analysis class, so I think I failed my test on Monday, but who knows. I've gotten past the point of caring now. :/

Tuesday, November 8, 2016

I've been slowly buying a lot of manga since AWA for the past two months since I realized that they were on sale on Amazon. I have already watched the anime for both manga series and really liked them, so I wanted to support the mangaka and buy the manga since they were so cheap and affordable!

Around the same time, I randomly decided that I wanted to get back into poetry, so I bought a couple contemporary poetry books. I was really interested by "Night Sky With Exit Wounds" because the author is a fellow Viet, so of course I wanted to support him. Plus, he won a couple of awards for his writing, so I have high expectations. :) I also read a lot of great reviews for the other two books, so I'm excited to start reading them.

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

October was pretty productive! I'm definitely happy about how much I managed to read, and I'm more surprised about the amount of movies and anime I managed to watch during such a busy month, lol.I read:

Monday, October 24, 2016

This year just keeps on getting better and better. >:( I'm so fucking tired of 2016 and all of the shit that's happened.Around the end of September, when my friends and I were on our way to Anime Weekend Atlanta, I got into a car accident. We were on the highway 15 minutes away from our hotel--we were so close!--when traffic started slowing down. I slowed down, but the car behind me, this big white construction van, did not slow down enough in time. It hit my car with enough force that we immediately hit the car in front of me. Luckily for the in front of me, it was more of a light tap than anything too damaging.I was still in shock at what had happened, so I drove forwards a little bit until I was on the median on the left side of the road since I was driving in the fast lane. The van that hit me also parked behind us while we were calling the cops and my insurance company. The van's driver came over to check on us in the middle of all of that.While we were waiting for the cops to come, we were taking stock of all of our injuries. Meethu was nauseous and her neck hurt, Jackie's head hurt a little, and the back of David's head hurt from slamming into the headrest.Thirty minutes into waiting for the cops to come, we realized that the van behind us got back onto the highway and was leaving the exit not too far from us. We were all in too much shock to manage to get their license plate number. We call the police again and tell them about it because it looked like it was about to become a hit and run since their van didn't really suffer any damages from hitting my car except for their bumper almost falling off.Later, we see the van appear on the right side of the road away from traffic. Man, we were in so much relief to see them and understood then what they were trying to do. Because we were parked on the left side of the road, which didn't have a lot of space to begin with, and because we were right next to the fast lane, it was really dangerous for both of our cars because everyone drove so close and fast next to us. The van was especially in danger since it was so much bigger than my car, which was a Honda Accord Sport.We waited for a while some more until the police finally came. They actually blocked off all of the lanes so that I could pull my car over to the right side of the road away from the traffic and behind the van that hit us. The police officer was actually very nice; he kept trying to make jokes so that we would lighten up even though it didn't really work. He got all of our licenses and wrote his report up and waited for my sis to come pick us up before he left. Technically, my car was still driveable since my engine was okay; my tail lights were unusable and my trunk took up half of the rear-view window though. However, because I wasn't in the right mindset to drive my car anywhere, we left it to get towed and Shelle and Kyle went to pick it up the next day and take it back to their house.By the time we get to the hotel and settle down, it's already six, and we're starving, so we go to the con and decide to eat at this buffet place in the food court. We went to a Kpop dance lesson panel and had a good time watching everyone dance and then people watched for a while. We met up with Madeline and she decided to stay at the hotel with us for the night since she was only staying for one day. This was great because she could take us to the hotel instead of relying on Kyle and Shelle to drop us off there.The next day, we went to more panels (mainly Kpop ones, lol) and bought some stuff from the Dealer's Room and Artist Alley. I was able to control myself and only bought one print. Instead, I mainly bought a lot of snacks this time, lol. We people watched a lot, and Jackie, Meethu, and I decided to check out this singles/mingle lounge which was only for people 21 and above. We ran into one of David's friends there, lol. Kyle and Shelle helped their friend host their annual cereal party at 11 that night, so we went to that, which was pretty entertaining too.Because my parents wanted us to bring my car home, it was decided that Shelle and Kyle would drive us and the cars down the next day. To make things easier for them, we decided to skip the con the next day and check out of the hotel that night, which really sucked. What sucked even more was that there was a shit ton of traffic that day, so even though we left at 11 that morning, we didn't reach home until 4. My parents, Shelle, and Kyle all had a wedding to go to in Atlanta at 6, so they were all rushing to leave practically as soon as they got home.The bullshit doesn't stop there either.Because the car accident was not my fault, the van's owner has to file a claim of the accident to their insurance company, which was Geico. I spend a whole week waiting to hear back from anyone when my own car insurance company calls me to tell me that they were waiting to hear from Geico as well and found out that no one had reported the accident to Geico yet! My own insurance company had to file a claim to Geico for me. They were able to get a claim number for me so that I could call them myself to see what to do next. I called them and set up a date for an inspection and found out a day later that because the cost of repairs would cost more than my car's current market value, my car would be deemed a total loss, and that they would give me a check for the price of my car and that would be it. I thought that I would just have to wait a month for them to fix my car and all would be good. No, I had to basically sell them my car and would have to look for another one to replace it. UGH.My dad went with me to sign the title over to Geico since it was still technically his car, and he started looking for a new car for me immediately the next day. That Friday, he found me a used 2014 Acura ILX and bought it for $2000 more than what Geico paid us. I thought that was the end of it but no, today, our house got robbed. Again. I left home around one to pick up David and go to the Acura dealership to get another car key. After I dropped David off at his school to study with his friend, my mom called around me around three to ask when I left the house because our house was robbed. She ended her call quickly to call the police, and I found out throughout the day from her and my bro that they mainly targeted my parents' room. They raided my parents' room and stole my mom's designer purses, her new expensive perfume, and my dad's new dress shoes. They didn't touch any of the other rooms. It's so frustrating because it has to be the same people who robbed us the first time a few years ago because they knew exactly where to go. However, this time they were sloppy. The police discovered a set of keys on a silver keychain that said Florida on it on the stairs. It doesn't belong to any of us, so it has to belong to the robbers.So yeah, this year sucks. I'm failing a class and am drowning in homework and have had to deal with all of this bullshit for the past few months and it just keeps happening. I'm so tired.

Friday, October 7, 2016

Luke Cage came out just a couple of days ago, which is the first on my list of things to watch on Netflix. Not only that, but this month has a lot of great shows that will be added on Netflix that I want to catch up on!Here are the shows and movies that I want to watch coming out on Netflix this month!

The Flash Season Two

iZombie Season Two

Kuromukuro Season Two

DC's Legends of Tomorrow Season One

Kung Fu Panda 3

Not to mention Supergirl Season One and London Has Fallen came out last month that I really want to watch as well. I really want to watch all the things but classes are so time consuming... D: I really need catch up and study more so that I don't fail ;__;

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

I have been a fan of the Maximum Ride series since I was in middle school. At that time, James Patterson had just released the third book in the series, and there was a lot of talk about the series being made into a movie for years but nothing really to show for it. It has been a long time since then, and I've only just heard about the movie now??? Apparently the movie came out on iTunes on August 30th, but it's been released in select theaters since September 30th.This is the trailer for it. Just looking at the trailer, I'm disappointed in half of the casting since it didn't stay true to the characters in the books. This isn't a big budgeted movie, so I'm not complaining that much about the special effects, but I'm still disappointed about the details that were left out, especially about their wings. Their wings are supposed to be two times their length and shouldn't be able to just pop in and out like how it is in the trailer!I've only ever watched some of Jenna Marbles' YouTube videos, so I'm not sure how she is as an executive producer. Actually, I'm more interested in how she got to become an executive producer for any nonYouTube film in general.Anyway, I hope the movie is better than the trailer makes it out to be, because even though it doesn't look that great, I will watch it because I have waited long enough for one to come out! Maybe I'll write a review after I watch it; it's been a long time since I last wrote a movie review, lol.

Monday, October 3, 2016

I've really been slacking these past few months. School, working out, and hanging with friends have been really taking a lot of my time lately, but hopefully I'll find time to read one of these books this month. :l

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

I'm only taking two classes this semester, and I'm struggling so hard to find the motivation to do anything. Granted, they're grad classes on my least favorite subjects, so I can understand why I don't like studying, but still. It's like senioritis times two. It's so bad. You would think that I would have plenty of time to study and do the homework, but I'm pretty sure it's because of that reason that I procrastinate so much. I think that I have more than enough time to do my homework and study, so I goof off and make plans until the last minute when everything's due, and then I'm scrambling to finish everything in time. That, and whenever I plan on studying, something or someone comes up, so I have even less time to be productive. You'd think I'd learn from my lessons these past few weeks, but I'm still making the same mistakes. -__-"Right now, I should be catching up and reading last week's chapter for Financial Accounting because we have a test on Monday, but I'm not. And I know that I really should study because I'll be at Anime Weekend Atlanta this weekend, but I just can't bring myself to study right now. Ugh, I'm disgusted with myself. I'm gonna try to do better, but I've been saying that since this semester started. Maybe I should get a part-time job so that I have to manage my time better after all...

Monday, September 19, 2016

It's been a while since my last post. I've mainly been busy with school and working out and hanging out with friends. My bro and I went to my sis and her fiance's Labor Day party a few weeks back, which was also fun. I went to a couple of events at school where I made my own dream catcher and watched Finding Dory last week. This past weekend, I went bridesmaid dress shopping with Emily and Tawanda, one of Michelle's other bridesmaid, and the next day, I went to the 25th annual Ocmulgee Indian Celebration with my friends, which was really fun even though it was super humid and hot.I have a test on Wednesday that I definitely am not ready for. I haven't even finished reading the last chapter yet! Ugh, my stomach has been hurting for the past couple of days, and David thinks it's because I'm stressed from school. I really hope not, because that would be the first time I've ever been so stressed to the point of having stomach ulcers or something. :/Anyway, here are some covers that I really liked. Enjoy!

Tuesday, September 6, 2016

I should really rename these to monthly hauls since I've been doing them so sporadically nowadays, lol. Over the summer, I ended up buying quite a bit of books. This was mainly because I had a steady income and could afford it and also because I had some motivation to start reading again since summer classes were ending soon. So here are some of the books I bought over the summer that I was too busy to post about a month ago. -__-"

Bought:

How Good People Make Tough Choices by Rushworth M. Kidder

Falling Kingdoms by Morgan Rhodes

Rebel Springs by Morgan Rhodes

The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson

Unite Me by Tahereh Mafi

Quiet: The Power Of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

I have a box full of books that I also bought during the summer, but I'm kind of pressed for space in my room at the moment, so I haven't unpacked it yet. I'll make another post when I get around to doing that, lol.